Pade Pade

On Practice

This morning it was rough getting up and taking the increasing long feeling walk to the Shala. It is always dark. I was able to walk right into the practice room, and begin. No Sharat today. As I stood at the top of my mat, I was sure I was not going to get through this. The days here have been rough for me, and yesterday I couldn’t really eat, and I didn’t really sleep. I stood there and prayed, chanting the opening mantra and really trying to embody its meaning:

Om
I pray to the lotus feet of the supreme guru
Who teaches knowledge, awakening the great happiness of the Self revealed
Who acts like the jungle physician
Able to remove the delusion from the poison of conditioned existence

I began very slowly. Half way through I decided that I would not do more than the three Urdhva Dhanurasana’s. Somewhere from deep inside me I stood up almost effortlessly after the third. I continued three more drop backs on my own, and then Saraswati (Guruji’s daughter) came to assist me. And off we went, after I came up from my last deep back bend she asked me why I wasn’t reaching and grabbing my ankles. I must have made a funny face, because all she then said with a very sharp eye was “later.”


On Music

We went over Raga’s today. It never occurred to me until that moment that the word Raga in music has the exactly same meaning as it does within the klesha’s. A musical Raga is something that is said to produce something pleasurable deep within the listener. The lessons just keep getting more intense. Up and down the scale with limitless exercises and variations, the singing, the correct method for clapping. It is starting to make the Ashtanga Yoga method feel easy. I have another lesson tomorrow. While I was practicing this morning this skinny cat climbed into the door way from outside and sat down. The girls at the Shakti house have been trying to court this cat from some time now, but the in house dogs (Junita) chase her every time.